Effect of Surgical Oncologist Turnover on Hospital Volume and Treatment Outcomes Among Patients With Upper GI Malignancies

PURPOSE: Lack of surgical expertise may affect cancer care delivery. Here, we examined the impact of surgical oncologist vacancy and turnover in a community cancer center serving a mixed urban and rural population.METHODS: Survival outcomes of patients with potentially resectable esophageal, gastric, and pancreatic carcinomas treated in the index hospital (n = 519) were compared with those of a then-contemporary control group derived from the state-specific SEER registry (n = 3,340). The onboarding period (ie, the period without a surgical oncologist) and early and late periods with a surgical oncologist were defined.RESULTS: At the state level, there was a steady trend of patients who were annually referred (290.4 ± 34.3 patients per year; P < .001) and underwent operation (158.7 ± 18.7 patients per year; P < .001). We observed the absence of an analogous trend in the index hospital ( P = .141). The index hospital diagnosed 12.2% of state cancers of interest during the years with surgical oncologists but only 6.7% of cancers when surgical oncologists were absent ( P = .031). The survival model adjusted for age, stage, and primary disease site comparing the early and late periods demonstrated that being treated in the index hospital did not result in inferior survival (hazard ratio, 1.067; P = .265).CONCLUSION: Loss of surgical oncologists was associated with referral decline and likely out-migration of patients, whereas prompt restoration of surgical oncology services reinstated volumes and preserved survival outcomes.